Dear President Donald Trump
A fully funded, competent and functioning National Labor Relations Board is critical to keeping your workforce of 168 million working productively.
The alternative is workers with nowhere to go, resorting to rolling strikes from which all lose.
Businesses have their Industry Bodies to represent their interests. As a Freedom of Choice, workers must have their Unions to represent their interests.
I can make the above statement from my own experience in Australia.
We had marketing and sales branches and warehouses in every State/Territory supplied by large trucks which left our factory 5 days a week.
I had a visit from a Union Delegate telling me the trucks would stop unless Union Membership increased at the factory.
I asked him to provide the Union brochure that invited our employees to become Union Members. He didn’t have one but came back for a second visit when I looked at the Union’s brochure.
I explained to him that the factory operated 3 shifts per day with women some 30% of the morning and afternoon shifts. Why would the Union’s brochure have these women join the Union?
He looked at the brochure and agreed it wouldn’t do this. I suggested he talk to the Union Leadership to consider the following offer by the Company to help the Union increase Membership.
The Company to have its Advertising Department prepare a Union Brochure with photos of the Union Leadership and female officers. From our warehouse, the Union to select the paper to be 4 colour printing in our factory. A Union Representative to sign off the printed proof of the Brochure. The Company to pay the costs.
For each Shift a meeting to be held in our canteen so that the Union Leadership could talk to the Brochure and explain the benefits of Union Membership.
These meetings were held and our factory workers including women asked searching questions of the Union Leadership. Subsequently a small number of our factory workers joined the Union.
Crucially, the truck kept on rolling and for the rest of my years in the business we never saw or heard of the Union again.
I later joined a Coal Mining and Export business. The Company had a large Industrial Relations Department which was out of touch with the miners and their families. The miners went on strike.
It wasn’t until the Company offered to put air-conditioners in the Company houses and upgrade the kitchens that the miners’ wives convinced the miners to return to work.
I later became a Consultant to businesses in financial trouble. One of my conditions was that if they had a Human Relations Department it be closed down and staff allocated to other duties. My years of experience being that a HR Dept. destroys the relationship between the workers and the Managers/Leadership which in turn destroys innovation and productivity on the job.
All success in life is an outcome of RELATIONSHIPS which are an outcome of OPEN and HONEST face to face COMMUNICATIONS.
From my 60+years in business the larger the Company the bigger and more frequent the LIES to the workforce.
Of course the biggest and most frequent LIER is Government and its Agencies.
Recently, the Australian Government had it plastered all over Media that Wages growth is higher than inflation, knowing that NET of TAX wages growth is lower. Remember this TAX finds its way into the prices of all Goods and Services to cause Inflation. Government TAXES and Charges are the cause of INFLATION not wages growth that follows inflation.
In Australia 2% LIBERTY TAX can increase by 40% the purchasing power of Wages net of TAX. Think what this would do for your workforce of 168 million and their families.
It’s TIME for you to LIBERATE American workers and their families with 2% LIBERTY TAX.
Kind regards
Derek Smith CA
